The decision by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum to rescind its human-rights award to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is sad, and proper.

Few people in modern times had evoked as much admiration and support as the courageous daughter of Myanmar’s founding father when she defied the dictatorial junta in Myanmar through 15 years of house arrest. And few people have been as disappointing in their subsequent failure to act against, or even to acknowledge, the horrific persecution of the Rohingya Muslim minority in her country.

“We had hoped that you — as someone we and many others have celebrated for your commitment to human dignity and universal human rights — would have done something to condemn and stop the military’s brutal campaign and to express solidarity with the targeted Rohingya population,” the Holocaust Museum wrote in an open letter explaining why it was taking back the Elie Wiesel Award it had presented five years earlier. Instead, the letter said, the ruling party Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi leads refused to cooperate with United Nations investigators, used “hateful rhetoric” against the Rohingya and cracked down on journalists trying to report on the vicious suppression of the group.

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Like many other former admirers of Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, the museum said it understood the pressures on her from a military establishment that still holds most of the country’s power, and a Buddhist majority which regards the Rohingya as trespassers who have no historic place in Myanmar. Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh to escape a campaign of execution, rape and arson, which the United Nations and the United States have termed ethnic cleansing.

Sadly, there is little to suggest that Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi has been coerced into silence, and far more evidence that she shares the Buddhist nationalism that is behind the military repression of the Rohingya. By many accounts, she has been furious when international visitors have raised the Rohingya issue with her, and has disparaged human rights groups and international media organizations over how the disastrous treatment of the Rohingya is presented to the world.

In January, Bill Richardson, a former governor of New Mexico and longtime friend of Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, resigned from Myanmar’s advisory board on the Rohingya crisis, calling it a pro-government “cheerleading squad” and accusing her of “an arrogance of power.” Other former supporters, including the Nobel laureates Desmond Tutu and Malala Yousafzai, have publicly censured Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi.
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The Holocaust Museum’s action is a sorrowful witness to the fall of a hero, but also to the real face of the enemy the Rohingya face in their land. The United States has already imposed sanctions on many generals and others accused of crimes against the Rohingya, and the United Nations and other nations should urgently add to the pressure.

Entire villages were burned to the ground last year as Burmese forces swept through Rakhine, killing and raping in a campaign the UN human rights chief called a ‘textbook example of ethnic cleansing’

(COMBO) This handout image of a satellite photograph released by Amnesty International and DigitalGlobe on March 12, 2018 shows new structures and fencing built over the previously burnt village of Kan Kya in Myanmar’s Rakhine State. AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL / AFP

Burma is allegedly building military bases on top of razed Rohingya villages, raising questions over the safety of hundreds of thousands of persecuted refugees who are due to be repatriated.

Detailed satellite images published by Amnesty International appear to show security infrastructure replacing homes burned when Burmese forces moved in to the northern Rakhine state. The images also show new refugee reception centres surrounded by security fences.

Amnesty said the developments in Rakhine were likely to signal further persecution when the Rohingya refugees return.

Tirana Hassan, Amnesty’s crisis response director, said: “The remaking of Rakhine State is taking place in a shroud of secrecy. The authorities cannot be allowed to continue their campaign of ethnic cleansing in the name of ‘development’.”

Entire villages were burned to the ground last year as Burmese forces swept through Rakhine, killing and raping in a campaign the UN human rights chief called a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing”.

The humanitarian crisis saw about 700,000 people cross the border.

Amnesty’s analysis of new satellite imagery appears to prove that at least three new security bases have been built in Rakhine since January.

The images also show new refugee reception centres surrounded by security fences and close to a heavy presence of military, raising concerns that Burma is preparing to restrict the freedom of Rohingya supposedly returning home to safety.

The images are published as the UN said nearly $1 billion (pounds 721 million) will be needed this year in international aid for Rohingya refugees living in overcrowded camps in southeastern Bangladesh.

As the monsoon season nears, aid groups need to relocate an estimated 100,000 refugees living in areas prone to landslides and floods, the UN country head Mia Seppo said.

]]>http://www.arakanmedia.com/research/burma-builds-military-bases-on-rohingya-razed-villages.html/feed0After massacres, Rohingya in Myanmar are dying from neglecthttp://www.arakanmedia.com/library/interview/after-massacres-rohingya-in-myanmar-are-dying-from-neglect.html
http://www.arakanmedia.com/library/interview/after-massacres-rohingya-in-myanmar-are-dying-from-neglect.html#respondMon, 12 Mar 2018 00:56:28 +0000http://www.arakanmedia.com/?p=6685The Rohingya, an ethnic Muslim minority who have been targeted by pogroms in Myanmar, are suffering through another lethal strategy: the denial of healthcare, food and humanitarian aid. After visiting Myanmar for a fourth time, columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote for The New York Times that the killings have shifted from “ethnic cleansing” to “slow-motion genocide.” Kristof talks to Hari Sreenivasan.
After massacres, Rohingya in Myanmar are dying from neglect

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HARI SREENIVASAN:

Since last summer, nearly 700,000 minority Rohingya Muslims have fled Myanmar to neighboring Bangladesh escaping attacks executions and rape by government forces. The conditions for those who remain in the Buddhist-majority country are hard to know because the Rohingya are isolated in areas where foreigners are mostly banned from traveling. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof slipped around police checkpoints and into remote Rohingya villages in Myanmar to document their plight. In a recent column he describes the situation as a slow motion genocide a massive humanitarian crisis that the rest of the world is all but ignoring. I spoke with Kristof at the New York Times offices yesterday to learn more. You called this a slow motion genocide. How come?

NICHOLAS KRISTOF:

Originally I call this an ethnic cleansing. But when you go and talk to the survivors and you hear about babies being thrown into bonfires about young men and boys being systematically having their throats cut or being shot and then when that violence has subsided then to see people being systematically denied medical care and in some areas systematically denied food systematically denied humanitarian assistance then I don’t know what else to call that but genocide. This is a deliberate policy aim to make the life of one ethnic group unlivable.

HARI SREENIVASAN:

This is your fourth trip in four years. Have you seen a change?

NICHOLAS KRISTOF:

Originally there was a lot of fear that this might blow up. Well, then it it did blow up. There was this rebel group that began to attack Burmese government installations and the result was this scorched earth response. And I think that in Myanmar the decision was we just can’t accommodate the Rohingya anymore, we need to drive them out and get rid of them and solve this once and for all. The Rohingya are confined to their villages or to a big huge concentration camp and they’re not allowed to leave the villages for education, for jobs, for medical care. In some extreme circumstances they can get permission and an escort to a medical centre but it’s difficult to get. And so, women who are pregnant end up dying in childbirth or they lose their babies and the kids can’t go to school. And this is just because they are Rohingya.

HARI SREENIVASAN:

One of the people that you profiled in your column was a woman who had just given birth.Tell us about.

NICHOLAS KRISTOF:

This is a woman called Sono Wara, she’s 18-years-old. This is her first pregnancy. She’s carrying twins, it’s a high risk pregnancy. But because the Rohingya in this village are not allowed to leave to get medical care there’s a traditional birth attendant who tries to help her deliver. She delivers and and both babies die unnecessarily.

HARI SREENIVASAN:

What’s the role been of Aung Sang Suii Kyi?

NICHOLAS KRISTOF:

Aung Sang Suu Kyi was one of my heroes. And to see her now become complicit in this genocide against the Rohingya is heartbreaking. I think in retrospect that we gave her too much credit for being in favor of human rights broadly of the Burmese people. In fact, I think she was something of a Burma nationalist all along. And I think also that she fundamentally became a politician. And one of the problems is that the old political split in Burma was between the military and democracy – that has changed. So now it’s essentially about how much you hate Muslims. And so for any politician there’s a fear that if they are soft on the Rohingya they will be hurt politically. I think that Suu Kyi sees that, she’s an opportunist and she is afraid of being perceived as friendly to the Rohingya,speaking up for them. And so she’s now a part of this.

HARI SREENIVASAN:

You also mentioned when it comes to hating specific groups that there are active disinformation campaigns there and social media is being used to rile people up.

NICHOLAS KRISTOF:

I think I and a lot of people thought that you know Internet comes to a country, social media, this frees people from the tyranny of government control of information and it does. But Facebook brought with it these vicious anti Muslim propaganda campaigns that were photos are shown purportedly of the Rohingya slaughtering Buddhists and they are spread around and they’re used to create hatred and to foster a broad desire among many many Burmese that they need to get rid of the Rohingya.

HARI SREENIVASAN:

I know there have been attempts in the U.S. Congress to do something about it but why the inaction right now?

NICHOLAS KRISTOF:

I think part of the problem is that right now the Trump administration is not terribly interested in human rights around the world. It has its own focuses and that we in the media who normally would be highlighting these kinds of issues were now enormously distracted by President Trump himself. And there isn’t really much of a business model in journalism for covering these kinds of stories and without coverage these kinds of crises persist.

United Nations Special Adviser on Genocide Prevention Adama Dieng today said the UN planned to amass evidence of genocide on Rohingyas through a judicial investigation.

Adama Dieng said this during a meeting with National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) Chairman Kazi Reazul Hoque in Dhaka.

Talking to newsmen after the meeting, the NHRC chief said UN is now trying to amass evidence of five “acts of genocide” as Myanmar military carried out the atrocities on the ethnic minority community, months after it described the persecution as “textbook example of ethnic cleansing”.

“Adama told me that an independent UN judicial investigation team needs to be sent to Myanmar . . . if they find the fives acts of genocide, the perpetrators could be exposed to justice,” Hoque said.

The NHRC chief, however, echoed Adama’s fears whether Myanmar would allow the UN team to visit its western Rakhine State, the scene of atrocities, saying “it depends on Myanmar”.

Naypyidaw earlier repeatedly declined to allow international groups from visiting the state since the army-led persecution began on August 25 last year forcing over 700,000 Rohingyas to take refuge in Bangladesh fleeing their homeland.

The Article 2 of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948) defines “genocide” as “any of the acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.

The acts are — killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Hoque said if the team found elements of genocide, the UN could follow instances of Rwanda and Kosovo for trying the Myanmar generals and others concerned in the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.

The UN special adviser on the Prevention of Genocide revealed the plan days after UN assistant secretary general for human rights Andrew Gilmour said Myanmar’s “ethnic cleansing” of Rohingya Muslims was still going on.

“It appears that widespread and systematic violence against the Rohingya persists . . . I don’t think we can draw any other conclusion from what I have seen and heard in Cox’s Bazar,” Gilmour said.

Separately, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees earlier this week said it was concerned about people living just inside Myanmar at its border with Bangladesh

Hoque urged neighbouring countries China and India to mount at least “economic pressure” on Myanmar to stop atrocities and return their nationals ensuring their dignity and rights.

He said Bangladesh would need to continue diplomatic efforts to convince China and Russia, the two permanent members of United Nations Security Council who opposed the UN resolution on Rohingyas, so they remain neutral to pass the resolution next time.
SOURCE: http://www.thedailystar.net/rohingya-crisis/un-plans-amass-evidence-genocide-rohingyas-1546657

]]>http://www.arakanmedia.com/human-right/un-plans-to-amass-evidence-on-genocide-on-rohingyas.html/feed0Myanmar army rejects UK MPs’ ‘one-sided accusations’ about Rohingyahttp://www.arakanmedia.com/news/burma-news/myanmar-army-rejects-uk-mps-one-sided-accusations-about-rohingya.html
http://www.arakanmedia.com/news/burma-news/myanmar-army-rejects-uk-mps-one-sided-accusations-about-rohingya.html#respondSat, 10 Mar 2018 05:24:31 +0000http://www.arakanmedia.com/?p=6662Rohingya Muslims crossing the border from Myanmar into Bangladesh near Palong Khali. More than 700,000 Rohingya have fled from Rakhine state to Bangladesh. Photograph: Bernat Armangue/AP

Rohingya Muslims crossing the border from Myanmar into Bangladesh near Palong Khali.
Rohingya Muslims crossing the border from Myanmar into Bangladesh near Palong Khali. More than 700,000 Rohingya have fled from Rakhine state to Bangladesh. Photograph: Bernat Armangue/AP

Myanmar’s military has accused British MPs of making “one sided-accusations” about the plight of the Rohingya and denied that any violence, extrajudicial killings, rape and arson was committed in Rakhine state.

Dozens of British MPs have signed a letter demanding that the foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, and the EU sanction Myanmar over the campaign of violence committed against its minority Muslim community.

In a statement responding to the letter, the army rejected all responsibility for the crimes committed and said MPs were “turning a blind eye to the real situation”.
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Since August 2017, more than 700,000 Rohingya have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh from Rakhine state. Thousands of people have been killed, villages have been burned to the ground and women subjected to sexual abuse and rape over months of violence. The UN has described the army’s actions as having the “hallmarks of genocide” and Amnesty has accused it of crimes against humanity.

In its latest denial of wrongdoing, the military reiterated its argument that the conflict was ignited by “illegal Bengali immigrants”. It accuses the Rohingya militant group Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (Arsa) of committing “genocide and ethnic cleansing on a minority of ethnic people in Buthidaung-Maungtaw region”.

According to “hard evidence” the military allegedly collected, it claims that between 10,000 and 20,000 Rohingya took part in attacks on police in August 2017 – a vastly different figure from the military’s estimate of 1,000 Rohingya insurgents at the time.

It also claimed to have done an investigation of its own into the violence in Rakhine, which concluded that “security personnel did not commit extrajudicial killings or sexually abuse and rape women. There was no unlawful detention of people, beating, killing and arson as well.”

In the case of Rohingya villages that had been burned down, “Arsa extremist Bengali terrorists set fire to houses and fled to Bangladesh first. They also threatened, coerced and persuaded other villagers to flee to Bangladesh, and many fled as a result,” the military’s own investigation found.

The military’s denial directly contradicts mountains of evidence collected by organisations such as Amnesty and Human Rights Watch as well as multiple reports in the media, with two Reuters journalists on trial in Myanmar for their investigations into mass graves.

On Monday, Andrew Gilmour, the UN assistant secretary general for human rights, who had been on a four-day visit to the refugee camps in Cox’s Bazaar in Bangladesh, said the ethnic cleansing was continuing.

“It’s not often that you see a bald-faced lie of this magnitude, but then again, the Tatmadaw [armed forces] have a lot of experience in having no shame – since they’ve been covering up their human rights atrocities for decades,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director, Human Rights Watch.

“Statements like these indicate why the international community must prioritise hauling senior general Min Aung Hlaing and other Burmese military commanders before the international criminal court to stand trial for the crimes against humanity they’ve ordered or committed.”

Kate Allen, Amnesty International UK’s director, said: “The Myanmar military’s denials of violence against the Rohingya is a blatant lie. This is just more denial on top of denial.”

]]>http://www.arakanmedia.com/news/burma-news/myanmar-army-rejects-uk-mps-one-sided-accusations-about-rohingya.html/feed0‘Acts of genocide’ suspected against Myanmar’s Rohingya: UNhttp://www.arakanmedia.com/news/international-news/acts-of-genocide-suspected-against-myanmars-rohingya-un.html
http://www.arakanmedia.com/news/international-news/acts-of-genocide-suspected-against-myanmars-rohingya-un.html#respondFri, 09 Mar 2018 05:31:37 +0000http://www.arakanmedia.com/?p=6666A woman holds a placard reading ‘stop to the massacre of Rohingya’ as she takes part in a rally in Paris on September 16, 2017, to protest the situation of Rohingya refugees fleeing Myanmar’s Arakan State. Photo: THOMAS SAMSON / AFP

GENEVA, March 7 (Reuters) – The United Nations human rights chief said on Wednesday that he strongly suspected that “acts of genocide” may have taken place against Muslim Rohingyas in Myanmar’s northern Rakhine state since August.

READ: Reuters says journalists arrested for probing Rohingya massacre

Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, in a speech to the UN Human Rights Council, also said that reports of bulldozing of mass graves in Myanmar showed a “deliberate attempt by the authorities to destroy evidence of potential international crimes, including possible crimes against humanity”.

“A recent announcement that seven soldiers and three police officers will be brought to justice for the alleged extra-judicial killing of ten Rohingya men is grossly insufficient,” Zeid told the Geneva forum.

]]>http://www.arakanmedia.com/news/international-news/acts-of-genocide-suspected-against-myanmars-rohingya-un.html/feed0John McCain and Angelina Jolie: America Should Lead in Saving the Rohingyahttp://www.arakanmedia.com/news/international-news/john-mccain-and-angelina-jolie-america-should-lead-in-saving-the-rohingya.html
http://www.arakanmedia.com/news/international-news/john-mccain-and-angelina-jolie-america-should-lead-in-saving-the-rohingya.html#respondThu, 08 Mar 2018 00:36:03 +0000http://www.arakanmedia.com/?p=6670A Rohingya refugee in Bangladesh who suffered burns when her house in Myanmar was set ablaze by soldiers. Credit Tomas Munita for The New York Times

Around the world, there is profound concern that America is giving up the mantle of global leadership. Our steady retreat over the past decade has contributed to a wide array of complex global challenges — a dangerous erosion of the rule of law, gross human rights violations and the decline of the rules-based international order that was designed in the aftermath of two world wars to prevent conflict and deter mass atrocities.

We’ve seen this unfold in Syria, where the United States and the international community have shamefully failed to address brutal violence that has engulfed the country for seven years, led to hundreds of thousands dead and contributed to the worst refugee crisis since the end of World War II.

And sadly, we are seeing now this same lack of effective diplomacy in Myanmar, formerly Burma, where since last summer 680,000 Rohingya Muslims have been forced to flee a systematic military campaign of killings, arson, rape and other mass atrocities amounting to ethnic cleansing.

Attacks against the Rohingya, who are denied citizenship under Burmese law, are not new. They have faced decades of repression, discrimination, harassment and violence. In recent months, thousands of Rohingya have been slaughtered, countless women and girls have been gang-raped, civilians have been burned alive, and villages have been razed. Human Rights Watch has documented dozens of horrific cases, including that of a 15-year-old girl who reported being tied to a tree and raped repeatedly by a group of armed men. Other survivors described children and the elderly locked in their homes and burned alive.
Photo
Angelina Jolie during a visit to the Rohingya community in Yangon, Myanmar, in 2015, and Senator John McCain of Arizona with reporters in Washington last year. Credit Tom Stoddart/Getty Images Reportage, via Maddox Jolie-Pitt Foundation, via Getty Images; bottom, Al Drago for The New York Times

For more than three decades, America stood with our allies to support democracy in Myanmar and demand freedom for thousands of Burmese political prisoners. That unified stand ultimately led to the election in 2015 of the country’s first civilian government after a half-century of direct military rule. Unfortunately, such promising progress has been squandered.

We need to show equal resolve now to stop the violence and safeguard the rights and freedoms of all Burmese peoples. The United States should take the lead in four ways, and ask our partners and allies to join us.
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“we can all unite around the belief that our commitment to freedom, justice, and human rights
rabbit March 10, 2018

Thank you. It is deeply disappointing that Senate leader Mitch McConnell has been blocking passage of the Senate sanctions bill– hope that…
Vetpolpundit March 10, 2018

This is a human tragedy. I agree with the overall tenor of this article. However, as a recent article in the Wash. Post reported (Mar. 7),…

First, we must demand an end to impunity in Myanmar and hold the perpetrators of these most recent atrocities accountable. The coordinated decision by the State Department and the European Union to cease consideration of travel waivers for current and former senior leaders of the Burmese military is a good start, but it is not enough.

Passing the Burma Human Rights and Freedom Act, a bill sponsored by Senator McCain, would impose sanctions on Burmese military and security forces responsible for the bloodshed and send the strong message that those who commit atrocities will pay a price. There can be no free and peaceful future for the country built on impunity for war crimes and persecution.

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Second, we must support efforts to properly investigate human rights violations. The Burmese military has issued an official report exonerating its forces of all accusations, and Burmese officials continue to dismiss allegations of wrongdoing as militant propaganda. America should champion and lead international efforts to ensure a credible, independent mechanism outside Myanmar to investigate and ultimately prosecute human rights violations and other crimes against the Rohingya, and encourage other countries to contribute to such efforts.

Third, we must support increased medical assistance for the Rohingya who have been subjected to unspeakable abuse. According to recent reports, many survivors are still not getting proper assistance because of a lack of funding for gender-based-violence programs. Addressing these shortfalls and taking steps to protect Rohingya refugee women and girls from further sexual violence should be a priority for the United States and like-minded countries. We must also take urgent steps to get medical care and assistance to Rohingya families in desperate need in Rakhine State in Myanmar.

Finally, the United States must lead efforts to resolve decades of ethnic strife throughout Myanmar, including by carrying out the recommendations of Kofi Annan’s Advisory Commission on Rakhine State and extending citizenship to the Rohingya people. This cannot be achieved while the Burmese authorities continue to deny humanitarian access to large parts of Rakhine. It will take robust diplomacy to overturn this; to keep the peace talks begun in Naypyidaw, Myanmar’s capital, a year and a half ago moving forward; and to bring more groups into the process.

While politics have left Americans deeply divided, we can all unite around the belief that a commitment to freedom, justice and human rights has distinguished the United States as a great nation. Our failure to hold accountable those who commit mass atrocities and human rights abuses will lead to more violence and instability.

As the humanitarian crises in Myanmar, Syria and elsewhere intensify, the world is closely watching whether the United States will reclaim the mantle of international leadership and take action. For the sake of all people who still look to America as a beacon of hope and yearn for a future based on shared values, it’s critical that we do.

John McCain, a Republican from Arizona, is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Angelina Jolie is a filmmaker and a co-founder of the Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative.

Two men walk between a rice field and a trash-choked canal running alongside the Rohingya shacks set up on the land of Bangladeshi farmer Jorina Katun near the Kutapalong refugee camp in the Cox’s Bazar district of Bangladesh February 9, 2018. Picture taken February 9, 2018. REUTERS/Andrew RC MarshallREUTERS

BY SIMON LEWIS AND THU Thu Aung

YANGON (Reuters) – Myanmar’s “ethnic cleansing” of Rohingya Muslims is continuing, a senior U.N. human rights official said on Tuesday, more than six months after insurgent attacks sparked a security response that has driven nearly 700,000 people into Bangladesh.

Andrew Gilmour, the U.N. assistant secretary-general for human rights, made the comment after a four-day visit to the Cox’s Bazar district in neighboring Bangladesh, where he met people who have fled from Myanmar recently.

“I don’t think we can draw any other conclusion from what I have seen and heard in Cox’s Bazar,” Gilmour said in a statement.

After Rohingya insurgents attacked 30 police posts and an army base on Aug. 25, Myanmar soldiers and police swept through villages in what the government says was a legitimate operation to root out “terrorists”.

Rohingya who sought shelter in Bangladesh have reported rape, killings and arson by security forces. The United Nations and United States have concluded the campaign amounted to ethnic cleansing.

Gilmour spoke to refugees who recounted abductions by security forces and at least one apparent death of a Rohingya man in custody in February, the statement said.

“It appears that widespread and systematic violence against the Rohingya persists,” Gilmour said.

“The nature of the violence has changed from the frenzied blood-letting and mass rape of last year to a lower intensity campaign of terror and forced starvation that seems to be designed to drive the remaining Rohingya from their homes and into Bangladesh.”

Despite Myanmar saying it was ready to accept back refugees under an pact signed with Bangladesh in November, he added, “Safe, dignified and sustainable returns are, of course, impossible under current conditions”.

Myanmar government spokesman Zaw Htay said he had not seen the UN statement published on Tuesday, but that Myanmar was not committing ethnic cleansing.

“We don’t drive out the refugees,” he said.

‘ORDERED TO VACATE’

Separately, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said it was concerned about people living just inside Myanmar at its border with Bangladesh.

The office of the United Nations High Comissioner for Refugees is monitoring developments after several thousand people living in a makeshift camp “were reportedly ordered to vacate the area by the Myanmar authorities”, the agency said.

Residents of what is called “no-man’s land”, as it sits outside Myanmar’s border fence but on its side of a creek that separates the two countries, say Myanmar officials have warned them on loudspeakers that their presence on the border line is illegal.

“UNHCR underscores that everyone has the right to seek asylum, just as they also have the right to return home when they deem the time and circumstances right,” it said in a statement late on Monday.

“People who have fled violence in their country must be granted safety and protection and any decision to return must be voluntary and based upon a free and informed choice.”

Zaw Htay said Myanmar had the right to move people from its territory and part of an agreed “buffer zone” with Bangladesh. Authorities had received information that “terrorists” linked to the August attacks on Myanmar’s security posts were sheltering there, he added.

“According to procedure security forces have to clear the area for security reasons,” he said.

Zaw Htay said he believed the people were staying on the border to “trap” Myanmar into conducting a “clearance operation”, which he said media and the United Nations would label as ethnic cleansing.

Bangladesh last week protested to Myanmar’s ambassador in Dhaka after Myanmar security personnel, estimated to number more than 200, gathered near the border.

“Troop movements so close to them are making things even worse,” said Major Iqbal Ahmed of Bangladesh’s border guard. “They are now even more reluctant to go back to their homeland.”

]]>http://www.arakanmedia.com/uncategorized/myanmars-ethnic-cleansing-of-rohingya-continues-u-n-rights-official-says.html/feed0Rohingya demand help as Rakhine atrocities continuehttp://www.arakanmedia.com/news/rohingya-news/rohingya-demand-help-as-rakhine-atrocities-continue.html
http://www.arakanmedia.com/news/rohingya-news/rohingya-demand-help-as-rakhine-atrocities-continue.html#respondTue, 06 Mar 2018 00:42:18 +0000http://www.arakanmedia.com/?p=6676Rohingya demand help as Rakhine atrocities continue In this file photo taken on November 26, 2017 Rohingya Muslim refugees walk down a hillside in the Kutupalong refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar. Hundreds of desperate Rohingya Muslims still pour over the Myanmar border into Bangladesh camps every week, six months into the refugee crisis. (AFP/Ed Jones) Bookmark this page

Sultana Razia, a Rohingya teacher from Chittagong, exposed such atrocities perpetrated against her Muslim minority group during a conference on Myanmar genocide held in Berlin last Monday.

Systematic rape is a weapon of war used by Myanmar armed forces in its “clearance operation” to force Muslim Rohingya to vacate Rakhine state, according to experts attending the conference.

Arson, torture, rape, murder and massacres have been reported by international organisations, rights defenders and media. The United Nations used the term “ethnic cleansing”, but many Rohingya and experts have referred to the campaign in recent months not as ethnic cleansing, but as “genocide”.

Yanghee Lee, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, said recently the military operation against Rohingya bore “the hallmarks of genocide”.

Genocide, by definition under the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, is killing; causing serious bodily or mental harm; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; or forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

The Myanmar authority has systematically and intentionally denied the existence and identity of Rohingya, said Ro Tun Khin, president of Burmese Rohingya Organisation in the United Kingdom, adding that the state of affairs had persisted since his childhood.

Born and growing up in Rakhine state, which was formerly known as Arakan, Ro Tun Khin said he moved to the UK 16 years ago when he was 17 years old, but kept in touch with Rohingya in his home country and in Bangladesh where nearly one million Rohingya refugees from Myanmar have taken shelter. Violence against Rohingya has recurred over the past decades, which culminated in the exodus of about 700,000 Rohingya refugees after the Arakan Rohingya Solidarity Army (ARSA) militant group attacked Myanmar security officials last August.

The attack prompted a so-called “clearance operation” by the Tatmadaw, as Myanmar’s military is known, which killed thousands of people and displaced hundreds of thousands. Many Rohingya told The Nation that the operation was a part of a comprehensive plan to evict the stigmatized ethnic minority from the country.

The clearance operation is still ongoing with hundreds of Rohingya continuing to flee from Rakhine on a daily basis, said both Ro Tun Khin and Siyeed Alam, chairman of Rohingya Association in Thailand.

“When I met victims in the last two weeks, they told me they had been threatened by Rakhine extremists who are forcing Rohingya into starvation because they cannot go to the market for food, they cannot go to the rice fields and they cannot go fishing,” Ro Tun Khin said.

“Perhaps only some 70,000 people remain in Buthidaung, which used to be crowded,” Siyeed said.

“They intentionally destroyed the whole Rohingya community. From my point of view as a legal expert, if they did this intentionally, it is genocide,” Ro Tun Khin said in a phone interview from Europe.

The allegation was serious but the international community is unlikely to take concrete action to stop the atrocities, Ro Tun Khin said.

Rohingya communities in the United States, Europe and Southeast Asia have called for the international community, the United Nations and notably ASEAN, of which Myanmar is a member, to take urgent action to stop the genocide.

“This is the 21st century, and the population should not be treated in that way. Mass rape, mass killing and even taking a baby from a mother and throwing it into a fire are unspeakable and unimaginable,” he said.

ASEAN should call an immediate meeting to discuss how to stop the genocide and Myanmar should be excluded from ASEAN if the military continued to act in this way, Ro Tun Khin said.

While Western countries such as the US and members of the EU have denounced the atrocities and pressured Myanmar, Anusorn Chaiaksornwet, a Thai scholar at Walailak University, has called on ASEAN, its current chair Singapore and neighboring Thailand to play constructive roles to end the crisis.

“Singapore could lead ASEAN to address the Rohingya issue this year and I hope Thailand will do a good job on that issue when it takes the chairmanship next year. We should have a clear policy to focus on human rights issues in the region, as the country previously did,” he said.

Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, who has held office long enough to understand ASEAN very well, should lead the group to tackle problems in Myanmar, Anusorn said.

Thailand should play a role in bridging Myanmar and ASEAN and the international community, if the Kingdom wanted to resume its leadership role, he said. “But there is no sign to indicate the country will do the job, so far,” he added.

Rohingya including Ro Tun Khin have said an advisory board headed by former Thai foreign minister Surakiart Sathirathai will not fix the problem but merely “whitewash” the image of Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

However, ASEAN jointly has welcomed Surakiart’s role to help implement recommendations made by a panel on Rakhine led by former UN chief Kofi Annan.

An immediate concern for the Rohingya community around the world is the bilateral deal between Dhaka and Nay Pyi Taw to repatriate the refugees to what they consider to be “prison camps” in Rakhine state.

The two countries reached an agreement in November to send refugees back to Myanmar within two years, but the process has been delayed since late January because of a lack of readiness and safety concerns.

Violence is still going on with houses being burned, lands taken and at least 55 communities being bulldozed, reportedly to make way for new “economic zones”.

“From the Myanmar government side, the attitude toward Rohingya has not changed,” said Ro Tun Khin, “We belong to Myanmar. We are not asking for a separate state. We want our rights and we want a protected return to a protected homeland.”

]]>http://www.arakanmedia.com/news/rohingya-news/rohingya-demand-help-as-rakhine-atrocities-continue.html/feed0Vietnam to stand by Bangladesh on Rohingya crisishttp://www.arakanmedia.com/news/rohingya-news/vietnam-to-stand-by-bangladesh-on-rohingya-crisis.html
http://www.arakanmedia.com/news/rohingya-news/vietnam-to-stand-by-bangladesh-on-rohingya-crisis.html#respondTue, 06 Mar 2018 00:40:18 +0000http://www.arakanmedia.com/?p=6673Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, on the right, shakes hands with President of Vietnam Tran Dai Quang at her office on Monday, March 5, 2018PID

‘Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and famous leader Ho Chi Minh gave their lives for the freedom of their people’

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has said that Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang expressed support for Bangladesh in finding an effective and lasting solution to the Rohingya crisis.

The Prime Minister made the statement at a joint press conference following a bilateral meeting with the president of Vietnam at her office on Monday.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said: “We discussed the Rohingya issue that threatens the region’s stability and peace. I sought Vietnam’s support for a peaceful settlement to this problem. President Tran Dai Quang expressed his support for an effective and permanent solution in response.

“Vietnam is our close neighbor. The two countries work with the purpose of pursuing peace and development. Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and famous leader Ho Chi Minh gave their lives for the freedom of their people. The people of these two countries share the same tradition and values.”

“In the sixties, I participated in the Vietnam War protest rally. President Tran Dai and I have just finished our official talk. During the discussion, we have identified new areas of cooperation,” Sheikh Hasina added.